Sarah Hawke Queen of the Pale

The civil war is over. The battle for the crown is about to begin. Three years ago, Rohen Velis was on the losing side of a long and brutal war for the White Throne. An orphan without a silver to his name, he had nothing-except the forbidden love of Delaryn Whitefeather, the beautiful daughter of the Usurper King. Rohen joined her father's army and fought valiantly in her defense, but the fate of the revolution had already been written. The Usurper was executed, Delaryn was taken as a prize by her conqueror, and Rohen was offered a bitter choice: hang in the gallows with the rest of the traitors or seek redemption in service of the Templar, the hallowed guardians of the realm. Either way, he would never see Delaryn again. But now, as the kingdom licks its wounds from the last war, a new threat has emerged in the north. A horde of Godcursed monsters called the Chol are flooding out of the mountains in greater numbers than ever before, and the Templar are the only ones capable of fighting back the dark tide. When Rohen rides to the front lines to join the rightful king's army, he learns that Delaryn is still alive-and that she has been forced to wed the very man who slaughtered her family and stole her away. Caught between his duty to the Templar and his love of the queen, Rohen must sacrifice everything to defend her one last time. QUEEN OF THE PALE is a dark fantasy epic filled with courtly intrigue, pulse-pounding action, and desperate, forbidden sex (58,000 words)